In the modern economic environment, businesses increasingly conduct business transactions electronically using the Internet or other computer network (“e-commerce”). Although originally primarily limited to business-to-consumer (“B2C”) transactions, the fastest growth within the e-commerce field now involves infrastructure and applications to support increasingly sophisticated business-to-business (“B2B”) transactions. These B2B transactions in particular may involve rather complicated financial transactions to reconcile the various accounting and other back-office processes employed at both the buyer and the seller, which may be, for example, two members of a supply chain.
As just an example, a traditional electronic B2B transaction between a buyer and a seller of goods might involve the buyer submitting an electronic purchase order to the seller, the seller processing this purchase order as appropriate (and perhaps accessing a supply chain planning application in the process), and the seller then manufacturing and shipping the goods to the buyer to fulfill the purchase order. The seller must then send invoice instructions to a separate accounting process for generation of an invoice to the buyer, creation of accounts receivable records, and the like. The seller then waits to get paid. The buyer receives the goods and must accept or reject the goods in whole or in part, update its inventory information, and return any rejected goods to the seller. The buyer typically waits until the order is accepted, which may include waiting until any replacement goods are received and accepted, before paying the invoice (less appropriate adjustments for rejected goods or otherwise). When the seller receives these returns, it ships replacement goods to the buyer to fulfill the order, along with performing any additional supply chain planning, inventory, or other back-office processes associated with the return and re-shipment. The buyer eventually pays in full, modifies its accounts payable, generates internal accounting information, and generates financial statements, profit and loss (P&L) statements, budgets, and the like reflecting payment. Similarly, when the seller finally receives payment from the buyer, the seller posts the payment, ages its accounts receivable, generates internal accounting information, and generates financial statements, P&L statements, budgets, and the like reflecting payment.
A feature of such commercial transactions in previous environments is that both the buyer and the seller must often wait while one party receives information from the other, processes it, and communicates responsive information to the other party. As a result, even a commercial transaction involving a single purchase order may take weeks or longer to be completed through settlement. This may prevent certain buyers who would otherwise pay quickly from being able to negotiate with sellers for lower prices based on such quick payment, ties up the working capital of sellers while these sellers wait for payments to be received, and has numerous other deficiencies. Thus, previous systems and methods for conducting electronic commercial transactions are inadequate for the needs of many business users.